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What you need to know

House math gets tighter for Mike Johnson

House Republican leaders have less room to maneuver after the death of Representative Doug LaMalfa, a 65-year-old Republican who represented California’s 1st District and chaired the Congressional Western Caucus. LaMalfa’s seat is now vacant pending a special election, coming soon after Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene’s resignation took effect on 5 January. Together, the departures leave Republicans with 218 seats and Democrats with 213, with four vacancies, according to the House Press Gallery’s running count.

The next pressure point is Texas’s 18th District, a heavily Democratic Houston-area seat left open after the death of Representative Sylvester Turner. A runoff is scheduled for 31 January between Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee and former Houston City Council member Amanda Edwards, and Democrats are widely expected to pick up the seat once the winner is sworn in, likely around 1 February. If that happens, the House would stand at 218 Republicans and 214 Democrats, with three vacancies.

In a full-attendance vote for speaker, that arithmetic leaves Speaker Mike Johnson with almost no margin: he would need 217 votes to win and could afford only one Republican defection if Democrats hold together.

It’s now the U.S. vs China, everyone else needs to pick a side

Possible U.S.-Russia showdown in the North Atlantic over oil tanker

Possible preparations for a U.S. operation to seize the supertanker BELLA 1, now renamed Marinera, appear to be under way this morning, with noticeable activity at the UK’s RAF Mildenhall airbase that may indicate staging movements forward through UK airfields such as Prestwick.

The Bella 1, now renamed Marinera, is an oil tanker that has recently changed its flag to Russian in an attempt to evade U.S. sanctions and military actions.

Russia has reportedly dispatched naval assets with the intention of escorting the vessel to a Russian port, which increases the risk of a direct standoff with U.S. and possibly UK forces in the North Atlantic if any interdiction or boarding were attempted while it is under Russian protection.

Birthplace of civilization

Iran’s protests continue at high tempo

Protests in Iran, initially sparked by the collapsing rial and soaring prices, have entered their second week with rising casualties and arrests. Rights groups say at least 25 people were killed in the first nine days and more than 1,200 arrests. Iranian officials have acknowledged some security-force deaths but have not published a comprehensive tally for protesters. 

What began with unrest among merchants in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar has broadened into a nationwide movement spanning most provinces, mixing cost-of-living anger with openly anti-regime slogans. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has sought to separate “legitimate” economic complaints from what he calls foreign-backed disorder, casting bazaar merchants as a historically loyal constituency because of their role in the 1979 revolution, even as the bazaars have again become a focal point for street mobilization.

Alongside the unrest, Iran International, an opposition-linked and Saudi-backed outlet, has reported that Iranian-backed Iraqi militias have deployed personnel into Iran to bolster the crackdown, allegedly moving through Shalamcheh, Chazabeh, and Khosravi under the cover of “pilgrimage” trips to Mashhad. The claims are difficult to verify independently, but they align with a broader pattern in which Tehran leans on allied proxy networks for manpower, intimidation, or specialist capabilities when it feels stretched. 

Meanwhile, President Masoud Pezeshkian’s government has signaled economic fixes, including meagre increases in subsidies and changes in central bank leadership, while the security apparatus has relied on arrests, force, and periodic internet disruption to blunt coordination and sap momentum.

The protests’ tempo appears uneven. The Institute for the Study of War and the Critical Threats Project have assessed that the rate of demonstrations dipped slightly on 5–6 January compared with 2–4 January, even as unrest remained geographically wide. A central uncertainty is whether any locality has genuinely slipped from state control. 

Some opposition outlets and activist groups claim protesters have taken cities in Ilam Province, including the majority Kurdish towns of Abdanan and Malekshahi, and that security forces have withdrawn. 

Kurdish parties and networks have also issued calls for strikes and coordinated action in Kurdish-majority areas, which could give the protest movement more structure than the largely spontaneous, economy-driven demonstrations elsewhere.

Whether that translates into sustained territorial control, or something closer to separatist momentum, will depend on the regime’s willingness to concentrate force in the periphery and on whether the broader protest wave retains enough energy to prevent security units from being redeployed and reasserting authority.

War jitters in Israel as Iran speculation grows

Israeli media report that the Israel Defense Forces said a major strike plan against Iran was ready and would have been launched but for developments in Iran, adding that preparations were complete and U.S. approval had been secured.

Unconfirmed social-media reports say emergency drills are under way, additional air-defense systems have been deployed around Tel Aviv, and Israeli authorities have told local officials to prepare for a possible state of emergency. They also claim Israel’s Home Front Command convened a special meeting with mayors and regional council heads, warning them to ready services for a shift to emergency footing.

Meanwhile, the top commander of U.S. Central Command is reported to be in Bahrain as unusual military activity is detected across multiple regions. Airspace disruptions in Greece and and Cyprus, are being interpreted by open-source intelligence watchers as efforts to conceal U.S. military repositioning. Continuous flights by RQ-4 Global Hawk and P-8A Poseidon intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance aircraft are being cited as evidence of heightened monitoring and pre-operation readiness across the Middle East.

Other unconfirmed reports claim Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has approved plans targeting Iran. Naftali Bennett, a former prime minister, added to the speculation on 5 January by posting a cryptic “tick tock” message alongside another post of an hourglass, as observers debate whether this is brinksmanship or a prelude to action.

A U.S.-brokered channel for Israel and Syria

The U.S., Israeli, and Syrian governments released a joint statement after U.S.-mediated talks in Paris on 5–6 January 2026, the latest round in a stop-start effort to reduce the risk of clashes along the Israel–Syria frontier, particularly in southern Syria near the Golan Heights. The talks resumed after a roughly two-month lull, against heightened tension since Israel’s troop moves into parts of Syrian territory following the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad in December 2024, an episode that Damascus says must be reversed through a full pullback and renewed respect for Syria’s sovereignty.

Both sides have been discussing ways to revive or adapt the 1974 disengagement framework that established a U.N.-monitored buffer arrangement, while Israel has sought stronger security guarantees in southwestern Syria, including limits on hostile forces and protections for minorities.

President Trump’s team pressed for the Paris meeting after a December 2025 Trump–Netanyahu encounter helped reopen the channel, and Israel reportedly refreshed its negotiating lineup for the renewed push.

In that context, the statement’s central deliverable, a U.S.-supervised “joint fusion mechanism,” or communications cell, is intended to formalize rapid deconfliction, incident management, and broader coordination; some reporting suggests Washington has floated basing the cell in Amman, alongside ideas such as a demilitarized economic zone near the border.

America First

America’s Arctic temptation

In the wake of the successful operation against Venezuela, President Donald Trump and his advisors have again spoken publicly about the U.S. acquiring Greenland, presenting it as an Arctic national-security priority.

The White House says it is considering a range of options, including diplomacy, a negotiated purchase, and other arrangements. Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State, has reportedly tried to cool the rhetoric by telling lawmakers that he does not believe an invasion is imminent and that the preferred route is a negotiated deal.

Mette Frederiksen, Denmark’s prime minister, has pushed back forcefully, warning that any coercive move would be intolerable for a NATO ally, and would threaten the very existence of the alliance. Nordic foreign ministers have also issued a joint statement emphasizing that decisions about Greenland are for Denmark and Greenland alone.

In that context, rumors are spreading that the U.S. might offer Greenland a ‘compact of free association’ (COFA), like that which America has with Palau, the Marshall Islands, and the Federated States of Micronesia. The COFA idea is best treated as an internal policy brainstorming concept rather than an agreed policy.

In practice, Compacts of Free Association are long-term frameworks that combine U.S. responsibility for defense with substantial economic support, in exchange for strategic access and influence.

They are usually concluded with sovereign states and require extensive congressional approval.

For Greenland, that creates a basic sequencing problem: any COFA-style arrangement would almost certainly depend on Greenland first choosing a legal path toward independence, through Greenlandic and Danish constitutional steps, rather than Washington negotiating without Copenhagen.

In the nearer term, the more realistic arena for U.S. leverage is likely to be expanded cooperation, investment, and defense arrangements that still sit within the existing Denmark–U.S. framework for Greenland.

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